There is no compile time in python

Yes, there is.

Python source code is translated into bytecode for a VM just like in Java or C#, and by default it's cached in .pyc files. It's only different in that you can ask to execute a source code file and the compilation happens automatically before the bytecode-interpretation.

`SyntaxError` is fundamentally different from other exceptions because it can occur during compilation, and only occurs at run-time if explicitly raised (or via explicit invocation of another code compilation, such as with `exec`/`eval`, or importing a module). This is also why you can't catch a `SyntaxError` caused by the invalid syntax of your own code, but only from such an explicit `raise` or a request to compile a source code string (see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1856408 ).

Yes there is, when it compiles source code to bytecode.